Huzn – Grief
by Mini Goat
Summary: Jack has a lot to make up for after Edora and his hurtful words after. Will he find the right words or will he lose Sam forever?


_AN: Spoilers for 100 days and Shades of Grey. Watched both recently as one should watch them together. The problem with knowing someone loves you is knowing EXACTLY which button to push to hurt them. As Jack proved utterly in Shades of Grey. _

Huzn – Grief

Jack went to the door already knowing who it was by the knock. "Carter." he said simply and started to waive her in.

Her arm came back, her fingers balled into a fist. "You son of a bitch." Her voice full of venom.

The next thing Jack remembered was pain. "Ow. Carter. What the hell." He was propped against the wall in his foyer. He wasn't sure if he fell that way or she'd propped him up as he'd been out cold. She was sitting cross legged across from him on the opposite wall, silently regarding him while she drank a bottle of his beer. "Help yourself." He waived a hand at the beer while gently probing his bruised jaw with the other.

She said nothing.

"Are you going to yell at me or did you just come here to punch me and drink my beer?"

Sam took a long slow drink from the bottle. Then she looked at him again without saying so much as a word or show any expression.

"I take it you don't have anything to say then." Jack concluded, rubbing his tender jaw that was rapidly bruising. "I guess you figure I deserve that and I won't write you up for assaulting a superior officer."

She shrugged.

See now this was starting to unnerve him. Sam was a talker. It was the one thing he could generally count on, that she'd want to talk about whatever was on her mind. Except right now she was just staring at him like she might a mold sample in a Petri dish. Interesting but not pleasant.

Oh hell he'd really screwed up hadn't he. He hung his head and rubbed the back of his neck. Jack sighed. "It's no excuse but Hammond tapped me the day I got back and…" he trailed off. She was still staring at him impassively. He raked both hands through his hair. "Tell me what I'm supposed to say here." He nearly begged her.

"No." the word was flat. Emotionless and then she took another pull from the bottle. Draining it.

He propped his elbows on his knees which he'd raised to relieve the ache in one. He stared back at her. The shadows lengthened.

So it wasn't the under cover op or the stuff he'd said to make her leave him alone. What then. Oh. Oh god. He hung his head again. Laira. Sam knew. He didn't know how he knew but he did. And now her expression made sense. It wasn't impassive at all. It was spent grief. The last time she had looked that way was when her dad had been dying of cancer. As though she had cried as many tears as she had in her and was now numb. With one exception. Her eyes were dark with suppressed rage.

Worse than a moment of weakness of sleeping with another woman because he thought he was never going home. No. She had greeted him with hope in her eyes The joy on her face had been palpable and he'd walked right past her without so much as a hello to try to talk a woman he didn't even love into returning to a world she had no business living in and for what. Because he'd been sad and missed the furious woman across from him so much that the ache in his heart had been unbearable.

What the hell was wrong with him. Not keeping his pants zipped wasn't the problem. It's not like they had ever talked about what was going on between them. Hell they were both pretending it was just a silly crush and dancing around the fact that they couldn't even touch each other without becoming hyper aware of how much they wanted each other.

No. His screw up was replacing her in his heart however briefly. Jack's throat hurt. There was one person he'd vowed to himself to never hurt if he could ever avoid it and here he'd stupidly done exactly that. He supposed he should check if she was armed before he did what he was about to do but honestly he figured if she shot him he really might deserve it anyway.

He leaned forward and scooted over to her wall slowly. Any flash in her eyes would have stopped him but all she did was look at him impassively until he was next to her, carefully not touching her. Once against the wall he resumed his previous position, knees up, elbows on knees as he flapped his hands uselessly a few times trying to articulate what he needed to say to make this right again. Make them right again. There was the obvious of course but he didn't think she was ready to hear that under the circumstances.

"Sam.." he looked in her eyes and desperately tried to come up with the words to express the regret in his heart.

And then she was in his arms shaking with grief and relief together. He held her tightly. "I never should have given up on you." He closed his eyes and kissed the top of her hair. "I never will again."


End file.
